


Like a Song

by GalaxyOwl13



Series: Moments and Memories [7]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Languages, Alien Time Lords (Doctor Who), Aliens, Doctor Who Feels, Foreign Language, Gallifrey, Gallifreyan Culture (Doctor Who), Gallifreyan Language (Doctor Who), Gen, I'm Sorry, I'm not a linguist, Languages, Languages and Linguistics, Linguistics, One Shot, Time Lords, Time Lords and Ladies (Doctor Who), Why Did I Write This?, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, but this is the fic where I try to be one, by the way English is the only language I really know, in which I discuss language without any non-English words, oh right because I'm weird, so I'm kind of winging it here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26366050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyOwl13/pseuds/GalaxyOwl13
Summary: A comparison of Gallifreyan to English.
Relationships: First Doctor & Susan Foreman, Fourth Doctor & Romana I, Fourth Doctor & Romana II, Tenth Doctor & The Master (Simm), Twelfth Doctor & River Song
Series: Moments and Memories [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906012
Comments: 1
Kudos: 46





	Like a Song

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the National Whatever Day September Edition Day 8. International Literacy Day – Write about someone learning a language.
> 
> Just want to warn anyone who has had negative experiences with cultural assimilation, you may not enjoy this fic. This celebrates the Doctor becoming more accepting of human society, but it also comes with giving up some things about the corrupt, terrible Time Lords. However, people can sometimes be forced to assimilate into other cultures and lose their way of life, which is bad, so I wanted to make sure people know I'm not trying to upset anyone and suggest not reading this if you think it will upset you.

The people of Gallifrey speak in melodious phrases, filled with flowering language and flowing prose. Their language is like music, and their conversations like songs, melodies and harmonies twisting in the air and combining to form meaning. The Time Lords do not consider their language beautiful. Instead, they consider the speech of other species to be ugly, incomplete.

Like the other children of Gallifrey, the Doctor’s words were music, and his writing, notes.

And then he left.

* * *

A TARDIS is a wonderful machine. To its pilot and passengers, it gives the gift of language. Everything sounds right to their ears, and they can always tell the meaning. When the Doctor and Susan decide to stay on Earth for a while, Susan brings home a book. But instead of the circular, interlocking characters of Gallifreyan writing, there are strange, choppy symbols, rather like the ones in Old High Gallifreyan.

“Why isn’t the TARDIS translating for us, hmm?” The Doctor asks, holding his lapels.

“Because it knows I want to teach you something,” Susan says, a smile lighting up her face. The Doctor knows that he cannot refuse, not something that makes his granddaughter so happy. He still grumbles, though, as he learns the archaic symbols of the area of the planet they are staying on.

He learns quickly. English feels more like a makeshift code than an actual language, with short, rough sounds. It’s nothing like the song that comes when he speaks. It’s horrible, he decides.

But Susan seems to love it, and whenever he focusses in on her exact words rather than the TARDIS’s translation, he finds her speaking this strange new way.

Gallifreyan has thousands of tenses, one for each situation that could come up in the lives of time travelers. There are over a hundred singular pronouns. English has four, and only two different types. He can never really decide which ones to use for the situation. When he tries to describe timelines in English, he cannot find the words. Why would a species who can see only in a linear way ever need them? Susan introduces him to metaphors. Gallifreyan metaphors are gossamer webs of words. English ones are clunky, boring, dull.

“Just in case,” Susan tells him while he learns. “After all, what if we get separated from the TARDIS?”

The Doctor sighs, and learns it. He refuses to speak anything other than Gallifreyan with Susan, though.

* * *

Susan leaves, and he’s left with only humans. So, he speaks in Gallifreyan all the time, worried he might forget it. There’s no one left with him to help remember, and he can’t return home.

* * *

When he meets the Time Lords again, he is briefly concerned that he might have forgotten how to speak Gallifreyan. He hasn’t, and he revels in the song even as he fights for his life.

* * *

In the Doctor’s third incarnation, he is stranded on Earth. One day, Liz asks him if his species has their own language. “Yes,” he says, in Gallifreyan, though he knows she won’t notice, can’t notice.

Gallifreyans have seventy-three different ways to say yes.

* * *

Romana will only speak in Gallifreyan, and chides him whenever he uses English. Over time, he has developed a sort of fondness for it. It is quick and easy and gets whatever he wants to say done. The languages of humans are rough around the edges, not like the lyrical ones of the Time Lords. But Gallifreyan feels cold, now, as if something is missing. He speaks in Gallifreyan, though, because he can’t explain what’s wrong in either language. All too soon, Romana has to leave and the Doctor is left speaking his language to himself.

* * *

Centuries later, there is the Time War. Gallifrey burns, and it burns in his memories, and it burns behind his eyelids every time he tries to sleep. Their language is how he remembers them, carries them with him in every word, in every song. But it comes out wrong, somehow. Broken beyond repair.

* * *

He meets another Time Lord. The Master has always talked in Gallifreyan, always refused to learn the languages of the planets he’s lived on. In his mind, Time Lords are superior.

The Doctor listens to his words, and they are not in the language of the Time Lords. They are not in the language that they share. The Doctor has not heard Gallifreyan in over a century, and they both know it. His oldest friend, his oldest enemy, refuses to use the language of their people. His words are short and sharp and there is no melody.

They are accusations. This is the Doctor’s fault. He destroyed the Time Lords, and now their legacy is gone as well. The words turn sour in his mouth, and he cannot speak in that language anymore.

* * *

All too soon, he changes faces again. This one wants to run forever, wants to move on, wants to forget. He lets himself. Gallifreyan was stupid anyway, full of purple prose and words made to sound important without meaning anything.

* * *

The Doctor has lived three years with River Song when she first asks about the language of the Time Lords.

“I don’t really remember it well,” he admits. “It’s been so long.”

“Can you teach me?” She asks anyway.

“Of course,” he says, and he does.

Sometimes, River tells him, she can see the timelines the way he can, when she looks very deep and concentrates very hard. There was never a good word for it. Except now there is.

The Doctor studies Gallifreyan. Each word carries memories of home, a home which he is finally ready to remember. Something feels off about it, though, as if the language isn’t as beautiful as it used to be.

“How do you say ‘I love you’ in Gallifreyan?” River asks.

The words come to the Doctor’s mouth, but they taste like ash. There are a hundred ways to say ‘I love you’ in Gallifreyan. Each one with a different meaning. I am proud of your good work, child. Your personality and mine are an optimal match. I enjoy conversing with you.

The closest he can come to what he feels is ‘I would be disappointed if you were gone’.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor says. “Time Lords don’t really have a word like that.”

“Then what do they sing about?” River asks, in Gallifreyan.

“Nothing,” the Doctor answers. He has learned a different song.


End file.
